Paul Collingwood - ODI Captain

Is he any good?

At the moment he has captained England in ODI cricket 24 times with 10 victories, a winning percentage of 41% Not really that good to be totally honest, even with some of the mediocre players he has had in his side. Compare that to Michael Vaughan who has a 53% winning record. England were beaten 2-1 by the West Indies and then went through a bit of a resurgence, beating India 4-3 and Sri Lanka 3-2 before coming crashing down in New Zealand and going down 3-1. The current series is 2-1 in New Zealand's favour with one match to go, so England do have the chance to draw.

He's done reasonably well with his batting since being made captain, an average of 37 with a strike rate of 89 but his bowling continues to be mediocre. Going at 5.05 runs per over and conceeding 39 runs per wicket isn't acceptable for somebody who is supposedly classified as an ODI all-rounder.

His leadership seems decent, nothing more, and his fielding is still pretty good (though TBF he's dropped a couple of tough ones lately). My question is, what are your thoughts on Paul Collingwood as England's ODI captain?

At the moment he has captained England in ODI cricket 24 times with 10 victories, a winning percentage of 41% Not really that good to be totally honest, even with some of the mediocre players he has had in his side. Compare that to Michael Vaughan who has a 53% winning record. England were beaten 2-1 by the West Indies and then went through a bit of a resurgence, beating India 4-3 and Sri Lanka 3-2 before coming crashing down in New Zealand and going down 3-1. The current series is 2-1 in New Zealand's favour with one match to go, so England do have the chance to draw.

He's done reasonably well with his batting since being made captain, an average of 37 with a strike rate of 89 but his bowling continues to be mediocre. Going at 5.05 runs per over and conceeding 39 runs per wicket isn't acceptable for somebody who is supposedly classified as an ODI all-rounder.

His leadership seems decent, nothing more, and his fielding is still pretty good (though TBF he's dropped a couple of tough ones lately). My question is, what are your thoughts on Paul Collingwood as England's ODI captain?

I reckon he's a pretty good captain, but then you can probably paint me as bias.

Some of the matches though could've gone either way - yesterday for instance, or the tied ODI, chasing 330 v India, defending 316 v India and Bristol where he personally put in a good all-round performance but let down by some classic English ODI batting from his team mates.

I don't think you can class him as a proper ODI all-rounder either. His bowling is a bonus but cannot be relied on in all conditions. That said, he's been better than Luke Wright and Bopara.

He's not going to be the world's best ODI captain, but I think he's an improvement - and given how generally dire England are in ODIs and how many 'class' players he has at his disposal for that format, he's not doing awfully.

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Well, he's done some stuff well and some stuff poorly. Sometimes he's excellent at the most vital part of ODI captaincy - being of the mindset of stopping singles rather than stopping boundaries as the first rule (only change your mindset to stopping boundaries once batsmen start to hit a few of them). Yet sometimes he's been woeful at this self-same thing.

Obviously, there's only so much you can do when your bowlers are wastes of space like Anderson and Panesar, but the attack he's had so far is an improvement on that which we saw regularly in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, which contained the likes of Anderson again, plus Harmison, Giles, Hoggard, Blackwell, Plunkett, Mahmood, Kabir Ali, Wharf, Kirtley, Snape, Clarke, Batty, Jones, Tremlett, Bresnan and Tudor. In Broad, Sidebottom, Swann, Mascarenhas and Flintoff (occasionally) there are decent performers there in recent times.

Collingwood is also a better ODI batsman than either of his two most recent predecessors, Michael Vaughan and Nasser Hussain (though in Hussain's case it's marginal). He's also better than last the one before that who held the post for any length of time, Michael Atherton (Alec Stewart and Adam Hollioake both held it for less than a year). He's still far from outstanding though, and ideally we'd have someone else.

He'll also be 35 by the time of the 2011 World Cup. Just something to think about.

You have to ask who are the alternatives. Colly got the job because England didn't want to have to keep picking Vaughan for ODIs. Strauss is out of the side at present, Flintoff would be a possibility (despite 'Fredalo') if only he could stay fit; so it would probably pass to Bell if the current incumbent were unavailable (a distinct possiblity given talk of suspension for England's recent slow over-rates).

Bell is still really establishing himself in the OD side and doesn't exactly stand out as captaincy material.

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